That Movie Site :: Pizza (2005)

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PIZZA

Reviewed by Heather Picker

Newcomer Kylie Sparks delivers a comically stilted "aight, biatch" in Pizza, but can a movie survive on "aight, biatch" alone?

Sparks plays über-alienated high school student Cara-Ethyl (her grandma couldn't decide whether to name her after Irene Cara or Ethel Mertz), who is celebrating her 18^th birthday with nary a friend in sight. But her mom (Julie Hagerty, gamely knocking into things and screeching her daughter's name the way only mothers can) was recently blinded in a doughnut-frying splatter accident, so Cara-Ethyl doesn't feel quite so embarrassed – she has helium handy and puts on a show, conversing with an imaginary friend for the benefit of her concerned parent.

Into this mess walks pizza deliveryman Matt (Ethan Embry), in slacker garb with a copy of Foucault's Pendulum in his pocket. Cara-Ethyl invites him to share her double-fudge mud cake and gets down to business, asking, "Excuse me, but aren't you a little old to be a pizza boy?" Matt is offended. "I'm not a pizza boy. I own the truck." Cara-Ethyl looks at him. "Delivery is an essential cog in the wheel of commerce," he tells her, sounding a bit like Lloyd Dobler. Of course, Lloyd was in high school and Matt is thirty.

Lloyd Dobler is of some importance here because Pizza is a teen comedy. Some critics dubbed its setup John Hughesian, but other influences are obviously at work, like John Waters, Todd Solondz, Cameron Crowe, and Jared Hess, the co-writer and director of Napoleon Dynamite, all watered down considerably. (The Dynamite comparisons, for example, can only be taken so far: Napoleon's quirks were matched by those of everyone around him, while Cara-Ethyl, who exhibits a few characteristics of Asperger Syndrome, does not have much genuine competition in the oddball department.)

Matt has been delivering pizza for 13 years and says he enjoys what he does. But his friends are all getting married and having kids and earning postgraduate degrees and he's still stuck in a rut, volunteering to take part in political activities and then never showing up, and making lots of phone calls to women that begin, "Look, um, about the other night…"

Cara-Ethyl, desperate to celebrate her birthday away from her mom and all the unclaimed party favors still on the table, impulsively joins Matt on his nightly rounds. Pizza chronicles their evening out (and writer-director Mark Christopher, who previously made 54, does an adequate job of making the movie seem larger than it is, though the awkward transitions between scenes, more a flaw of the writing than the editing, cheapens things), its erratic tone veering from sweet to sour and back again, much like its heroine. Sparks has no trouble switching from cheerful to comically angry on the turn of a dime; the movie itself, and costar Embry (of the teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait, which seems to play on cable 24/7), isn't quite as adept.

Comparisons to 1980s high school flicks appear to come from the movie's fundamental tenderness towards its protagonists (the doughnut-frying accident certainly suggests John Waters, but would Dawn Davenport ever gently brush her daughter's hair, and would Waters ever stoop to a slow-motion pizza-throwing shot to suggest emotional liberation?), its birthday theme and unlikely friendships, but the humiliation Cara-Ethyl endures at the hands of her vicious classmates is more realistic than anything The Geek ever encountered, and perhaps understood by Matt on a level he'd rather not acknowledge. But even when its scenes of teenage cruelty hint at something perceptive -- Alexis Dziena of Broken Flowers is a perfect miniature of the scheming high school diva who cannot contain her shock and outrage when she finally meets a social situation she can't manipulate in her favor (though her character would seem more at home with the girls in Thirteen than with other high school seniors) -- Christopher doesn't dwell on the indignities of being picked on by the in-crowd, preferring to set up odd gags involving hair and fake cocaine.

Pizza was shot in 15 days on a $300,000 budget, constraints that are evident in the lack of camera movement more than anything else, and runs only 80 minutes long. Some of the smaller details are obvious but work anyway, from the Hairspray artwork in a music teacher's living room to April (Nikki Michelle James), a classmate who hangs out with the bitchy girls but unexpectedly finds she has a lot in common with Cara-Ethyl –- not that she plans to give up her seat with the popular jerks any time soon. There is also Frank, Cara-Ethyl's foul-mouthed little brother, always jumping out of the shadows armed with a water gun and an endless supply of taunts and slurs. Watch how Frank (played by Martin Campetta, one of the bullies in 12 and Holding) exits a scene. He moves in the same goofy way Cara-Ethyl talks.

About how Cara-Ethyl talks – she's rapid fire one moment, halting and confused the next, and when she yells at Frank while throttling him, she shows off a vocabulary that could belong to Elliot Offen's long-lost grandkid. She also has the occasional monologue that sounds better suited to a precocious, queeny teenage boy: "I think I would enjoy being an alcoholic. Very much so. A drinker and a libertine. Never in a relationship, but always in love. At church, they'd call me a whore. But I would fancy myself a spirited individual of grand appetites featuring roast duck, red wine and well-shaped men." (As it is, the gayest moment in Pizza comes when "To Sir with Love" plays on the soundtrack. That's such a Jennifer Saunders move, acknowledging Lulu exists.) She's an uneven character in an uneven movie, but Sparks holds your attention.

About the DVD: Pizza will be released on DVD this week by Genius Entertainment with bonus features including the 9-minute featurette "A Slice of Pizza," and a feature commentary with Mark Christopher and producer Howard Gertler. In the commentary, Christopher admits he came up with Cara-Ethyl while drunk on a bottle of tequila (that sounds about right), and discusses the challenges of making the film the InDigEnt way.

Written and Directed by Mark Christopher. Starring Ethan Embry and Kylie Sparks. 2005, 80 min., Rated PG-13 (for language, sexual content and a brief drug reference).

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